11 Comic Book Movie Characters Who Were Killed Way Too Quickly

1. The Mandarin

Ignoring for a minute the fact that the storm that surrounded Shane Black's "re-imagining" of the Mandarin as a false front terrorist figure-head (and the subsequently awful comedic slant of Trevor Slattery's revelation), there was something else even more troublesome that spoiled the otherwise very good Iron Man 3.

It's all well and good having Slattery as an impostor, and reveal the real villain to be Killian, looking to gain financially out of the terrorism, and it's even fine to have had him be a genuine super-villain thanks to his use of the super-serum to become a walking flamey scab, but there was precisely no need for him to be called the "real Mandarin". Killing Killian meant killing the Mandarin, and killing off any opportunity for a genuine super-villain based on the comic book figure to appear in future Iron Man films (not that RDJ seems keen on them anyway).

Really, Killian should have been Killian, trading off the name of a genuine terrorist faction (which would have tied in with the Ten Rings Easter Egg in the first film more efficiently), and the Mandarin should have been a real terrorist leader, incensed by the hi-jacking of his name, and infuriated that he has been blunted by the defeat of someone with no real affiliation to him.

That could easily have fed into a whole plot for a future sequel, and allowed for a purer (albeit ignoring the racially charged elements) adaptation of the Mandarin.

Which of these comic book movie deaths do you think was the biggest mistake? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.